Happy New Year

Happy 2009!

Great music happened live and in the studio throughout 2008 and we can't wait to see what 2009 brings to our ears.

We received several pieces of good news to close out the year:

Frogs Gone Fishin' was ranked one of Denver's most interesting local bands of 2008 by MetroMix. Peep the article here.

Our first show in New Orleans will be the day we get there, February 20th, opening for Russell Batiste and Friends with George Porter Jr. and Jason Neville. Russell is a friend of mine, always crazy to hang out with around New Orleans and consistent partner of George Porter Jr., a legend in his own right after founding The Meters four decades ago.

As a final New Year's present, I got to see Widespread Panic at the Pepsi Center last night. I had never seen a Panic show before and was greatly impressed by the lights and overall production quality of the jam band's set-up. It certainly psyched me up to play tonight.

Have a safe and happy new year!

Play It Out pt. I

Lay It Out So You Can Play It Out
pt. 1 Booking Gigs

The New Year is upon us and many aspiring musicians are making plans and resolutions about how to get their act together this year.

I am by no means a veteran at this whole music business thang, not by a long shot. I do feel I can share some of the advice that I've learned, in large part by trial and error, which might make these posts a little more useful than your generic "How to Succeed in the Music Business For Dummies" book. Rather than start at the very beginning (tuning your guitar...), or jump to the advanced stuff like copyright law, I'll begin my Lay It Out So You Can Play It Out series with what most musicians want to do badly, but have the most trouble accomplishing: booking gigs.

Obtaining successful gigs at clubs will depend largely on your definition of a successful gig. If you want to pay rent and build a fan-base through a regular gigging schedule, it will require much more work than if you seek to play only a couple gigs for the experience and fun of it all. For this article, we’ll assume you’re trying to make music your living. Weekend warriors will still find this information helpful, but I’ll try to outline a complete, step-by-step strategy for booking and playing gigs at clubs around your town.

Research.
How you research your potential gigging market depends on what genre of music you’ll be playing. In the jazz scene, there will only be a few clubs around town that specialize in hosting jazz music. Even between those clubs, some might prefer traditional acoustic jazz, while other joints might book electric avant-garde groups. It’s important to know if the music you want to play live will mesh with the vibe/preferences of the club you’re trying to book.
In the early days of booking my band, I’d sometimes alter the description of our music to suit what the club owner wanted to hear. This can be dangerous ground, but advocating your “jazz-influenced” rock sound can be more advantageous than the “Black Sabbath-influenced” elements of your playing.

Cold calls.
This means either calling or literally calling on the club for the first time. Unless you have a friendly connection, chances are you don’t know the bar owner from a barstool. Your first contact with this needs to be professional, but not sterile, and will focus on asking them some key questions. Try not to be too drunk or stoned and inquire about the following information:
What nights of the week do you have live music?
Do you have any open nights between these dates (insert dates here)? Most club owners like booking their schedules at least two months in advance.

At this point the club owner will either blindly give you a gig (not really a good sign) or inquire about your act. More than likely they will want to see a website, Myspace, or physical press kit before they will discuss further.

Booking.
After the club has seen your immaculate website and heard your stupendous tunes, you will still have to be persistent in calling them back to book the gig. This time when you ask if they have any open dates, and they say “sure, Feb. 24th sounds great”, you ask:
What time is load-in and sound check?
How long will we be playing and for what set-lengths?
How will we be compensated? Cash? Check? Beer? Make sure and agree to this before you set foot in the door.

Some clubs even require that their acts fill out contracts and 1099’s for tax purposes. If you are making enough dough for these formalities, congratulations!

Playing the gig.
So you got the gig... way to go. A big factor in whether you can come back next time is how you perform (both musically and otherwise) while you’re at the club. Again, try to not show up drunk or stoned. A good policy is never drink more than you think your audience is drinking. This keeps your head in a place that’s congruent with the energy in the room. Play good songs (a healthy mix of covers and originals), keep time between songs short, talk to your audience but don’t ramble or preach and overall, smile and have fun.

This advice will obviously differ between genres. There will be heavier drinking for heavy metal music at biker bars, more covers in a jazz set, more time between songs for singer/songwriters, more preaching in praise music and less smiling in emo music.

There is one thing all musicians of all genres can agree on, however, and that is getting paid for your performance. While artistic in nature, playing music is a job like any other and should be seen as such. Everyone gets stiffed at some point in their career. But, contracts or verbal agreements about payment before the gig go a long way toward avoiding this situation. If you do get a club owner who ducks out before you’re done packing up and leaves his waitstaff to explain to you that you are getting exactly zilch for schlepping your gear around and playing an awesome show, you can only do a couple things short of damaging property. You can do everything in your power to get back in touch with the club owner and get the coin, or simply tell every musician you ever meet to never play at the shady establishment. It goes something like this:

“Never play at the Absinthe Lounge in Dallas, because they stiff musicians.”

See? Just like that.

In the end, persistence is the key to booking gigs. Oftentimes it takes many calls over a period of weeks to make that initial club contact. After that, it takes one phone call or email to that club to book a date. So get out there, research, and lay it out so you can play it out! Happy gigging everyone.

Happy Kwanzaa

First off, I hope everyone is having an awesome holiday season spending time with friends and family. Kwanzaa starts today and I wanted to mention this often overlooked celebration. Kwanzaa is a seven day event with the typical candle-lighting, feasting and gift giving aspects we find at most holiday gatherings. Kwanzaa is a pan-African celebration and promotes ideals such as unity, cooperation, purpose and creativity. These are ideas I personally agree with and acknowledge, especially when listening to the heavily spiritual music that has come from Africa to shape music in America, much as Kwanzaa is a purely American holiday with strong roots in Africa.

The music I play owes a lot, directly and indirectly, to musical traditions which originated in Africa.

To sum up a semester's worth of ethno-musicology in one broad statement, you might say that music in Europe came about by written tradition, whereas African music centers largely around improvisation and group creativity. Given that fact, what we do in Frogs Gone Fishin' exists in a much more African, rather than European, context.

Beyond relying on group improvisation to make music, several of the genres and musical devices we employ come from Africa. Afro-beat, the blues, jazz, reggae, New Orleans, call-and-response melodies, syncopated rhythms, "dirty" sonic textures... all have their roots planted on the African continent.

So happy Kwanzaa everyone. I personally recommend going out and getting a Fela Kuti record to celebrate.

My next post will be the first in a series about starting a career in the music business and everything that might mean to you. Whether you'd like to perform, promote or sit in your bedroom and write songs for money, there will be a post for you sometime in the new year.

Pirates

Not of the Somali variety.

No, these pirates headquarter out of their basements and bedrooms, planning and hording with hard drives and bitTorrents. They are musical pirates and they have been running amok, plaguing the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) since the Captain himself, Shawn Fanning, launched Napster in 1999.

This week it was announced that several nations, including China and Iran, will bypass any potential legal options and attack the pirates at their source, off the coast of Somalia. It was also announced that the RIAA will take a similar approach to combating online music piracy. Lawyers for the group said that rather than taking offenders to court, they will work directly with internet access providers to shut off access to websites that direct traffic to places where illegally pirated music is available. These websites are not yet illegal because they only direct traffic, not host any content themselves.

Pretty tricky, these pirates.

I'm not really sure how the international community will fair against the Somalian marauders, but I think what the RIAA is doing is a fair step against only the largest perpetrators of online music piracy. I'm sure if the RIAA had means of prosecuting each and every pirate perp out there, they would. But the problem is simply too massive. After all, online content is some of the only free content (or free anything) people get these days.

That is where I would draw the line and help the pirates out. Not because I think people should get free stuff, but because the MAJORITY of musicians out there benefit greatly from the uninhibited file-sharing of their music. Remember that in most genres, musicians make vastly more money off of touring revenues than recording revenues. The Frogs pay rent and buy groceries every month by playing two to four shows a week, every week. (I'm staying in CO while my family travels to TX for Christmas because have a show on the 26th and flying back the day after x-mas is a movie I've seen too many times...)

By comparison I would estimate we sell 10-20 CD's a week, revenue which is still flowing directly to our independent record label, Oh/Ya Records, in the form of recoupable funds.

Another form of band revenue is merchandise. Our shirts are really cool looking and once we have the design ready for some FGF action figures, we can expand the product line.

I truly hope that pirates, musical and maritime, will have some heart this time of year and stop capturing massive amounts of illegal music and large groups of sailors, respectively.


Everyone here at Frogs Gone Fishin', Trevor Jones Music, Oh/Ya Records and For/Sure Productions, hopes everyone out there in the blogosphere and real world have a safe and happy holiday season.

Cabin Fever

The real problem is how cold it has been in Denver so far this winter. Beyond the fact that I've spent the last four years in Louisiana softening like a powdered beignet, the temperature has officially reached record lows this year. The other night it was -19F at the airport, just a few miles up the road from our house. As I was trying to remove the guitars and drums from our trailer in the middle of the night to keep them from freezing, my hand froze solid to the metal lock. I don't really know what Shakespeare meant by "Now is the winter of our discontent...", but I think it had something to do with the thin layer of flesh peeling off my palm as I disconnected the lock from my hand.

There are several good activities for musicians to pursue during the winter. During an intense spout of boredom I found this video of slap-bass originator Larry Graham of Sly and the Family Stone, "thumpin' and pluckin" away on a song called "POW". Nothing warms the soul like some funk from the height of the period. Take special note of Graham's wildly fringed costume, adding to his already exuberant stage presence.

While I'm on the computer observing those funky forefathers who came before us, I also like to lay down some funk of my own on GarageBand, that ubiquitous but functional recording software that comes standard on Mac's these days.

While many will make the arguement that GarageBand has turned legions of wanna-be deejay bush leaguers into undeserving recording artists, I personally believe there is an art to using such a simple program in a creatively fufilling way. And nothing kills time better than indulging every musical whim with nothing more than a computer, mic, guitar and keyboard.

Perhaps the one task I am consumed with out of excitement (and not boredom) is that of running For/Sure Productions LLC. We are happy to announce the first official artists confirmed for Mountainside Mardi Gras 2009: Papa Grows Funk and Johnny Sketch and The Dirty Notes, two solid funk bands from New Olreans, naturally. Contracts, budgets, artwork and publicity are just a couple aspects of running a huge festival that I avoid thinking about while trying to fall asleep at night, and try and focus on during the day.

Using this ultra-new, crazy concept called the "internet" will be key in promoting the event. Soon we will launch a Facebook group for those who'd like to get involved with the festival in exchange for tickets and the experience of "day of" operations (backstage at a Lil' Wayne concert is where I consider to have earned my promoting merit-badge).

The internet can do lots of things, even help us book shows in New Orleans for our move in February. But the World Wide Web won't keep you warm in the winter...

Music helps a little.

I recommend doing what we did in college on the rare occasion it got cold in New Orleans. Hang blankets over the doorways to your living room, blast the space heater, cuddle up with your browser and write a blog. I'm feeling warmer already...

Ivan Neville and Dumpstaphunk

New Orleans has been serving up a steaming heap of funky gumbo ever since The Meters strutted on the scene in 1969. Even as The Funk progressed from P-Funk to Prince, Run DMC to Red Hot Chili Peppers, the New Orleans scene has stayed true to the ideals of it’s funky forefathers. Those ideals can be heard most any night of the week, spouted out in smoky clubs all over the city by those who have a penchant for deep grooves, hot horns and incorporating the word “funk” into their nomenclature. Bands like Papa Grows Funk, Big Sam’s Funky Nation and The Funky Meters all rule their respective rhythmic territories on funk street. But the newest rising star in both the funk and jam band scenes comes not from the street, but straight from the dumpster itself.

Since their inception in 2002, Ivan Neville and his Dumpstaphunk have dropped the proverbial dumpster on the notion that they would become just another formulaic funk band with a cliche way of incorporating “ph” into their group’s name (Phish had the idea back in ‘85).

The wall of syncopated sound created by the double bass attack of Nick Daniels (The Neville Brothers) and Tony Hall (Dave Matthews and Friends) is nothing less than thunderous. Driven by drummer Raymond Weber (Trey Anastasio Band), the Dumpstaphunk package is rounded out by cousins Ivan (organ, vocals) and Ian Neville (guitar). The resulting musical outcome puts any phonetic criticism regarding the band’s name immediately to rest.

The most surprising aspect of Dumpstaphunk’s history is their quick ascent from hypothesis to headliner in 4 short years. By 2006, Ivan’s band was traveling cross country to play and headline festivals like Bonnarroo and High Sierra.

I caught up with Ivan Neville in New Orleans via phone as the band took a break from recording new Dumpstaphunk material in the studio:

TJ: What does “Dumpstaphunk” mean?
Ivan Neville: Laughs... The name is from a song I was working on right around when the band was getting together. The guys were playing so nasty and dirty, we figured there is nothing funkier than a dumpster.

TJ: You’ve both played and sat in at a lot of festivals over the past year. What have some of the
highlights of this scene been?
IN: We played a festival in Florida recently, Bear Creek, where a lot of cats sat in... Derek Trucks (Allman Bros. Band) and Eric Krasno (Soulive) and a bunch of other guys. It was a great festival, lots of great funk bands. I also remember this one festival we did, what’s it called... Earth Dance!
Yeah, that one was good.

TJ: Where is that festival held?
IN: I don’t even remember, but... yeah that festival is a good one.

TJ: Some people have said that Dumpstaphunk is leading somewhat of a funk revolution in New Orleans right now. Do you think you guys are doing something new and revolutionary, or continuing a tradition that has been around for a while?
IN: We like to think that we are doing something new. We come from good stock. Of course, we are influenced by The Meters, the quintessential New Orleans funk band. We take from a lot of other musicians, try to mix it up, and make it new.

TJ: Thanks for taking time out of the studio to talk to me today. What are you guys working on and what can Dumpstaphunk fans expect in the near future?
IN: We are working on new Dumpstaphunk tunes... a lot of stuff. We are hoping to put a new special guest on the album. We are just trying to get the funk out there, really. We need to get over to Europe and Japan and spread the funk on an international level.

---- ----

The “good stock” Ivan refers to are his immediate ancestors, the founding fathers of the funk. Both Ivan and Ian’s fathers were instrumental in creating the music of The Meters and The Neville Brothers, bands whose legacy in the funk scene can never be overstated. When talking to Ivan, it’s clear that he enjoys both the tradition he came from and the direction Dumpstaphunk is taking.

However, it is neither family nor future that defines Dumpstaphunk, but the funk fans themselves. “Bear Creek was Dumpstaphunk’s festival,” one festival-goer related to me. “The highlight of the festival, they straight up brought the funk”.

Dumpstaphunk’s music can be heard at http://www.dumpstaphunk.com.

Winter Update

Singing some songwriting in Nashville.

Apologies for neglecting the blogosphere for the past month! Life in Colorado has been so busy, yet strangely comfortable, that maybe I haven't felt the need to relate the woes of tour life to the public. I wanted to highlight some things that Frogs Gone Fishin', For/Sure Productions and myself will be up to in the coming months, so I can get back to more esoteric musings about that crazy thing called the music business.

I've been in Nashville since Monday; Portwood (guitar, FGF) and I had a hellish time spending 12 hours in the Tourmobile trying to make it back to Denver after a two-day mountain run, followed by a 6am flight to Tennessee for an acoustic gig at the venerable 3rd and Lindsley.

After all the smack I've talked about this town in previous posts, you are probably wondering why I would forgo three precious days (out of only two months) in Colorado to head back out on the road (to Cashville of all places...). We do have some very good friends here. But, the real answer lies in an ongoing strategy to try and promote our music in every way possible, outside of the two or three shows a week FGF plays. Portwood and I played acoustic versions of around 15 Frogs songs on Monday night and closed for a well know band, popular in the 90's, called Blessid Union of Souls. You will certainly remember hearing this song from pop radio, circa 1996. The Blessid guys seemed in good spirits, despite a notable decline in their popularity since the 90's: a good example of the absurdity of radio and record label inflation in the 80's/90's.

Promoting our music also means doing interviews and making sure our album is available to the public in as many ways as possible, a task mostly undertaken by Oh/Ya Records.

In the promotion company realm, For/Sure Productions is very busy contracting bands and artwork for Mountainside Mardi Gras which will be officially announced sometime in January or February next year. I'm learning a lot about artwork and design by interacting with our artists at Right On studios in New York. They are doing a lot to aid me with my visually based inadequacies.

In my personal pursuit of writing more (the recent lack of blog postings excepted), I've applied to write about the CO music scene at a hip publication based in Denver. I'd love to expand my writing scope in this way. Blogging is great and a great way to let your community know what is happening in your life and work. Assignments coming down from an editor at a magazine would be a different challenge altogether and probably limit some of the more jaded opinions I have about the industry from coming out. I would be focusing on bands and their music instead, which is really all that should matter to me from an artistic perspective.

I use that perspective to keep perspective on my life as a musician, promoter and (hopefully) writer. Or as Kenny Rogers put it:

"I Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In"

Next post, an interview with Ivan Neville of Dumpstaphunk.